Hello!
Another issue hits the net, and thanks must go out to those who have
commented before, namely: Kelly Anderson, Rory Bryant, Jamas Enright, Ben
Rawluk, Lalo Martins, Ken Schmidt, Rob Rogers, and Specter. Y'all are my
bread and water.
But, I'll let the issue speak for itself, picking up right around the
end of #39...
Enjoy!
====================================
DERELICT Press Presents
The fortieth issue of
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" Updraft "
Crowns: Part 2 of 5
A psuedo-Acraphobe title
._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._.'COVER`._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._.
A bone-white crown fills the center of the cover. Two hands grip
it, so tightly that blood leaks from the palms.
)()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
" Thou hast no _right_ to bliss."
-- Matthew Arnold, _Empedocles on Etna_
Savannah slept fitfully. The clock's unpitying glare would shine
through her eyelids when she tried to sleep, until she opened them what
seemed like hours later to find that only a few minutes had passed. When
she woke she felt tired, but when she tried to sleep something kept her
awake. All she really wanted was to wipe the insistent feeling of loss
from her mind, to take refuge in a place that kept out the sense of
things gone or leaving.
After what seemed like an eternity of this half-in, half-out
world of faint dreams, an insistent knock dragged Savannah from her bed
and blurrily across the room to answer the door.
"Hello!" Brittany stood grinning in the hallway.
"What time is it?"
"Five in the morning. C'mon, we gotta go. It happened."
"Huh?"
"Paytan."
Savannah looked at her for a moment, still half-asleep and
uncomprehending. Then the color sank slowly out of her face.
"Oh," she whispered "Oh no." She leaned against the doorway and
started to drop to her knees, eyes welling with tears. Brittany grabbed
her by the arm and dragged her up.
"Whoop! No, no, we have to _go_."
"Brittany, Paytan made us swear not to do anything. She'd kill us
if we -- "
"That," Brittany whispered, leaning in close, "Is why I've been
preparing in secret."
Savannah looked the other girl right in the eye, Brittany's hand
still on her arm. "You don't have any powers."
"Yup."
"I don't have any powers."
"Yup."
"And Allen's powers aren't any use in this situation."
"And Paytan's stuck in hell. So we bring my hovercycle and a load
of guns, let's GO," said Brittany, and took a step down the hallway.
"Brittany, stop and think, okay? This is HELL we're going to.
Guns aren't going to be enough. The last time we nearly died." Savannah
stopped, realization washing across her face. "That's how you survived,
isn't it? When Allen made us leave you there, alone. You didn't even use
the guns, you just... went cyborg on those demons."
Brittany looked down at the carpet. "Yeah."
"When they hit you this time, they'll hurt you. They can kill
you. And we don't even have a way to get there."
"Yes we do. His name is Kalyani Sahay, and I hear he's a very
nice boy."
Savannah rested her temple against the doorway, expressionless.
The weight of her gaze, formidable even without powers to back it up,
bore down on Brittany. The cold reason of it withered away any hope.
Finally Brittany stepped back and folded her hands across her chest.
"So that's really it, then?" she asked softly. "Say goodbye to
Paytan, plan the funeral?"
"Brittany, she didn't want us to go after her."
"She's out there hurting. Right now."
"She -- "
"Tell me why she deserves this," said Brittany. "Who has she
killed? She only took souls when their owners were already dying, and
only then so that Dirmarw would keep blocking her memories of the
summonings. Nei _walked_ into that circle. Paytan's no angel, but -- "
"I wasn't saying that she deserved it. I just -- don't think
we can do this."
"You don't know that. We take the hovercycle, it's fast. We use
the guns only when we have to, go in there, get Paytan, get out."
"So they can just summon her again?"
"Not if we're scary enough. We were so scary last time that they
didn't summon her again."
"Brittany, you weren't there! When it seemed like Paytan had gone
nuts, and that thing stabbed Viveka. When we found Nei's body, it was
just... pieces of metal. When we found you. Sometimes I start crying and
I don't even know _why_." Savannah flung out her arms, voice strident and
on the edge of breaking. "It was just _one_ after the _other_, and I
didn't even have time to THINK sometimes before WHAM!" she said, and
slammed the side of her hand into the wall, looking into the past. "And
WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!"
Finally Brittany grabbed her hand, but Savannah just took hold of
it and held on. Her palms were sweaty, shaking. "You were dead, everyone
else kept dying, and I realized there were only two people I cared about.
Bryan, and Paytan. And we all thought she was nuts, or a murderer. And
she _was_ a little crazy, but she brought you back."
Brittany opened her mouth to say something but the look in
Savannah's eyes stopped her.
"I'm holding your hand. You were cold and dead in a simple white
dress that you would _not_ have worn if you had a say in it, and I was
never going to wake up at some insane hour with you at my door again. And
oh God, Brit, it wouldn't take much for you to go away again. Or for
Bryan." Savannah looked up, and this time the tears were coming down. "Or
me. We're too easy to kill."
She held onto Brittany's fingers so tightly that both their
knuckles were turning white. Brittany reached out and put her other hand
over Savannah's, trying to calm her down. Savannah didn't say anything.
The hallway filled with the silence of two people full of words but
waiting.
Finally Savannah jerked her head down and closed her eyes, grip
tightening. "I'm thinking that maybe I don't want to do this sort of
thing anymore."
"I think the question is, do you want to do _this_ thing?"
whispered Brittany.
Savannah buried her face in Brittany's shoulder. "No, I don't,"
she whispered. Brittany let out a deep breath, but Savannah grabbed her
arm before she could finish. "But I will," she said, muffled. "I will."
She stood away suddenly, grabbed Brit by both shoulders and shook
her. "Promise me that no one will die."
"No one dies," whispered Brittany, as Savannah really began to
cry. "I promise. No one."
Then she went to find some tissue, and hoped that life wouldn't
make a liar of her.
-=ð=- -=ð=-
Paytan had been alone when it happened. Halfway down the hallway,
on her way to Allen's room. The air started to heat up.
Just like that, it was over.
She had known since the instant in the caverns when the demon
came leering out of the darkness to say that Hell was once again aware of
her, and angry. Then that girl in the hallway, the bitch with black hair
and a cruelly superior smile, had stuck her hand in as well. Paytan could
still remember that sensation, the words pouring out of Ravencroft's
mouth and, instead of being _heard_, bypassing her senses entirely and
striking at her heart. Her own death, pulsing through her until it had
filled every part of her skin, living side-by-side with her mind and
overlaying everything she saw. Still, she had taken what time she had
left and spent it with the people she loved.
She deserved this.
This is what she told herself, even as she crumpled shaking to
the ground, the air drying out all around her and beginning to stink of
brimstone. She had done evil, had caused pain. But she was still afraid.
She held onto the memories of the past few days, let them fill
her mind. Picnics and hoverbike rides and long, hot nights. But they
slipped out of reach in seconds, and the certainty of death swelled up
and swallowed her whole. The heat rose around her, the air began to glow,
and something inside Paytan that was thin and fine and fragile, snapped,
and died.
Everything went black.
She came to on cold stone, in a place that stank of refuse and
rotting food. Something was speaking off to her left, but she didn't
bother to listen. She didn't even open her eyes. The voice issued a
command, and against her will her body pushed itself from the ground and
stood.
She wondered dully how long it would take her to die.
Probably a long time. They would want to play with her first, do
things, then torture. It could go on for years.
She had killed Nei. With Dirmarw, she had sucked out peoples'
souls. And she had good as spit in the universe's face by bringing
Brittany back from the dead. It was only right that the universe spit
straight back into hers.
She was supposed to burn.
In Hell, the one who summoned her had perfect control, just as
she did when she summoned a demon from Hell to Earth. Might made right.
Something slammed into her side and for a second she was
airborne, coming down hard on the stone. It had kicked her. The pain came
from her side first, then from the shoulder that had hit the ground, then
from a thousand other points. Was this how Brittany had felt, dying?
Paytan opened up one eye just a slit, and found a shard of stone
nearby, polished to a mirrorlike shine. She could see the soft glow of
her own eye, with a blurred silhouette of her horns and hair behind it.
She could not for the life of her think of what it reminded her of.
Then she was lifted and held in the air, painfully, by one arm.
She let her head loll back and her eyes close again. Maybe if she were
lucky the Demonlord who had summoned her would be stupid, and kill her.
Then it wouldn't matter what they did to the body. But she doubted it.
She was shaken, so hard that she felt something in her shoulder
rip. Her cheeks were already wet with tears.
She was weak, and this was the way the world worked. Echoes of
her own pain, flashes of blood-soaked darkness and a world that ached to
breathe in hung in the back of her mind, picture-stills from her future,
gifts from Ravencroft's vision. She had fought and she had bled and won
her own, tiny, battle. Nothing else mattered. Brittany was alive and if
the Demonlord got to work fast enough there wouldn't be enough of Paytan
left to save.
Then it dropped her, and pain flashed through her leg. She had
landed on something that wasn't the ground. The Demonlord laughed.
Paytan opened her eyes, and found herself face-to-face with an ancient
suit of armor, complete with a skeleton behind the visor. A real knight,
probably from a real castle, dead for centuries. She remembered a vision
a demon had given her once, herself in armor with a sword at her side,
horns curving out of the helmet like a violation. Her hands had been
soaked in blood.
The demon had been too powerful for her, covered all in mirrors
and laughing. Because it was the strongest demon she had ever summoned,
and she could not control it.
And she had become so very strong after Brittany.
Paytan went still. Not the limp helplessness from before, but
predator-still, jaguar-still, rage-still. The Demonlord's approach was
heavy and loud, overconfident. Weak, she had been so weak. She had
deserved everything the creature had done to her so far. Fear and fate
had made her stupid.
She heard the Demonlord speak again, something about 'little' and
'foolish' and 'human'. Normal demon crap.
"Stand and look me in the eye," said the Demonlord. Paytan got
to her feet, slow and steady and letting her power seep up through her
center to fill her every cell. She had been strong enough to turn the
black-haired bitch's little fortune-tell back on herself, she had been
strong enough to raise someone from the dead, and she had been fool
enough to think that none of that mattered. Force was king, and she had
forgotten.
She opened her eyes and met the gaze of twisted grey Demonlord
with a crown on its head. She threw all her strength at the invisible
ties that held her, the web that bound her will to that of her summoner,
and shattered it. She felt it falling to pieces around her, kept on going
even as the its eyes widened, she chanted and held her hands just so.
The bolt slipped from her and tore into the Demonlord like a wild
boar, sent it screaming backwards without an arm. The tendrils of energy
it sent out missed her by yards, and it should have been bringing up
shields but it was in pain, wasn't thinking, was _stupid_. The power spun
up inside her almost without her asking, and she released it again and
again in a pummeling wave of blasts.
The Demonlord's ribcage collapsed, and she burned one of its
legs to cinders. By now it was throwing power around wildly but it didn't
matter because _she_ had her shields up, _she_ was smart. The few attacks
that got through cut but shallowly, and gave her more blood to power her
spells. She battered the demon until there wasn't a spot on it left
untouched, until the only thing it could do was scream and scream, until
even that faded away.
It died. Paytan stood, breathing the stinking air in great gasps,
with Hell spreading out from her in all directions. The last tattered
webs of control faded away, and she began to laugh.
Then she leaned down and laid her hand over its face, its eyes
still open and staring. The ball of flame that exploded from her palm
blew out the Demonlord's skull, sending ichor and lumps out in a black
fan across the stone. She reached into the twitching corpse, elbow deep
in ichor, laughing, and pulled out the crown. It fit wonderfully.
If she was going to burn, it would be brightly.
Bright as the sun.
-=ð=- -=ð=-
"Do you know what this is?" Brittany held up a small revolver.
Savannah squinted at it from across the room.
"It's a small revolver," she said.
"I know, but what _kind_?"
"I don't think it matters. It's tiny. Demons are big. Unless
you're talking about a small army, or a small atom bomb, we're gonna need
big stuff."
Brit set the gun down gently and dragged what looked to be an Uzi
off the top shelf. "How d'you think this'd do?" They hadn't found Master
Blaster in the Lobby or the Peril Room, and after knocking for five
minutes with no reply on a room door covered head to foot in pornographic
pictures they had decided to throw caution to the wind and tank up on
weaponry on their own.
"I think someone's coming," said Savannah. Brit stopped for a
moment to listen, and the sound of approaching voices came through the
door.
"Good. I want to know what shelf Doommonger and Master Blaster
get their guns off of." Then the door swung open, and Master Blaster and
Faq Boy walked in. Faq Boy froze, glaring. Brittany grinned.
"Hi Allen. Ya wanna come help us save your girlfriend?"
"You shouldn't be alive," said Allen.
"I know," she said and hopped off the stool. "Master Blaster?
We've been looking for you all over. Even in the little dusty corners
where all you find is socks. We need guns that kill demons, or at least
scare the heck out of them."
"Babe, you are talking to the right man. Are they a certain kind
of demon? Do they have scales, immunity to flames or heat?" He paused.
"Are they cute?"
"There's probably a wide range of them," broke in Savannah.
"We're going to be crossing through a bunch of different places in Hell,
so we won't know what to expect."
"In that case..." Master Blaster headed toward the back of the
room, with Savannah trailing behind him.
Brittany turned to follow, but Allen's hand closed viselike
around her upper arm, and he spun her back around. "Dead people never
come back for long," he said.
"Hey, like you're supposed to be here, Mr. Funky Dimensional
Twin. We're both misplaced. And I'm not dead," she waved her other arm
around. "See? Pulse. I'm breathing."
"Eventually, whatever Paytan did will fail. Whatever's animating
you will stop working," Allen glared at her.
She looked back quietly. "You know how Paytan gets when there's
something she wants. She wanted me back. So." And she spread her arms,
the patchwork trenchcoat laid over a garish forest green skirt and
bubblegum pink tank top, over Brittany herself, alive. "This isn't
temporary. This is why she's in Hell right now, this thing she's done."
"I don't want you involved."
Brittany laughed in his face, and Allen tightened his grip and
jerked downward. She muffled a whimper but grinned up at him. "I have a
way to get us to Hell."
"Occultism Kid could do it easily."
"From what Savannah says, he won't be too eager to do anything
that helps Paytan. To him, she's just big risk. And the transmat can get
us to Hell, but it doesn't know where Paytan is. We could end up
anywhere." Brittany took a deep breath, let it out. "Do you honestly
think you can save her by yourself?" she whispered.
Allen was silent, watching her.
"Maybe with me and Savannah along we'll actually have a chance of
getting her back." Brittany smiled at him, a twist in her mouth. "I may
be a former dead girl, but I'm a former dead girl on our side." There was
a noise off to their left and Allen glanced up, letting go of her arm.
"How're we doing over here?" asked Master Blaster, walking up
behind them. His hand came to rest firmly on Brittany's rear.
She gave him a surprised look, then stepped back and smiled,
pulling a plush fish from inside her trenchcoat. "This is filled with
rocks, and it's very heavy," she said. Master Blaster nodded, appearing
to follow the conversation. "Especially when it comes down on top of
your head," added Brittany.
"Ah," said Master Blaster. "I'll go back and check on Savannah,
then."
Brittany waited a moment for him to leave, then met Allen's eyes
again. "So, we do this together?"
-=ð=- -=ð=-
Paytan stood at the edge of a vast plain of earth, the heavy
white crown sitting on her head. Before her writhed hordes of demons,
colorless and pasty like worms, covering every inch of bare ground. They
snarled at her.
"Do you remember me?" she asked.
Several hundred surged toward her, a roiling body of lashing pale
limbs. They reached her and parted at her feet, sweeping to either side
like the ocean around a stone. Paytan twisted both of her hands in the
air and the worms screamed as one.
As they thrashed helplessly, she knelt to brush one finger along
a demon's moist skin.
"I remember you."
She clenched her fist and thrust it upward toward the sky. Every
single one of them burst into flame.
-=ð=- -=ð=-
"You wanted to talk to me? Hopefully about the treaty?" asked
Kalyani Sahay, current Avatar of Skaine. He stood by the TV in the
rec.lounge, his hand glowing blue where he traced it casually over the
dark screen.
Savannah nodded. She saw Sarah take a breath out of the corner of
her eye, while Brittany just rocked back and forth on her heels. Allen
was somewhere behind her, and Savannah suspected he was planning on using
her as a human shield if he decided to pull his gun. They stood in a
disorganized spread in front of the couch, like a party of diplomats
before a king.
"Your treaty's going to get signed," she said.
"Excellent!" Kalyani smiled. "There's a catch, isn't there?"
"A favor. That's all we ask."
"Your Sarah is an Avatar as well. What do I have to offer that
she doesn't?"
"A gateway to Hell."
Kalyani stopped. He looked at Sarah consideringly. "Technically
she has the power -- "
Sarah made an irate noise. "No way am I opening a gateway to
Hell. No. Way. They came to me first, you know. I said 'No', like any
sane person would," she said.
"No," said Kalyani.
Sarah looked like she was going to punch him. Savannah heard
Allen shift behind her, and stepped forward before he had a chance to do
anything crazy. "Look, you'll getting your signature, your peace treaty
between the last two earth-based minor cosmic powers. Is it going to kill
you to open a little dimensional portal?"
Kalyani looked down at his hands, thinking, then slowly back up
at them. "My predecessors built our family into a killing machine. There
are over forty secret bases worldwide, do you know that? They supplied
The Reality with money and every piece of their machinery. And now I'm
trying to take it all apart. There are people in my family who want me
dead. I can't afford to sink all my power into opening a dimensional
portal, not even for a few minutes. It would endanger my life."
"There's more than one way to endanger your life," said Allen.
Kalyani's eyes narrowed. Savannah spun to face Allen, to stop him
before he could do something rash. But Allen was just standing there,
looking coolly serious. "Mr. Sahay, you are in a building full of
superheroes," he said. "The heroic thing to do is help us open a portal
to Hell. By standing in our way, you may cause some of them to label you
as a villain."
"I have a feeling that there are quite a few here who would label
you as a villain, as well. If they knew you," said Kalyani.
"We're going after a friend," said Savannah.
"The demon girl," supplied Kalyani.
"She's not a demon," snapped Allen and Savannah in unison.
Brittany, looking none too pleased herself, opened her mouth to speak,
but Kalyani started first.
"I can offer you all a deal," he said. "If I am to do something
of this magnitude, I would need both Brittany and Sarah's signatures on
the treaty."
Sarah made an agonized noise.
"But since recent history has shown that getting Miss Loman's
signature is a fight in itself, I would settle for the former Avatar's
signature, and Sarah's help in opening the portal."
"Deal," said Savannah.
"No deal!" said Sarah. "What do I get -- "
"You get to go home," said Savannah. "You get to wash your hands
of us, and Net.ropolis, and return to the tiny town and the tiny life
that you miss so much."
Sarah clenched her teeth. "Okay. Yes, I'll do it."
They adjourned for one hour to gather supplies. Savannah searched
out Master Blaster again, and made him swear not to tell Bryan what was
going on. The last thing she needed was her boyfriend mounting an
eleventh hour rescue-rescue mission and getting killed by a demon. She
needed to know that at least one person was back at home, safe.
Then they were all back together again, in front of the LNHHQ
doors. Allen, with a few extra guns. Savannah had her rifle and large
number of bullets. The hovercraft was stacked with weapons of various
kinds. Sarah, standing off to the side, looked sick to her stomach.
Kalyani held out a piece of paper. Brittany stepped forward and
inclined her head toward him, took the paper. She read it over, then
pulled a pen from one of her trenchcoat pockets and signed with a
flourish. Kalyani let out a deep breath, and took the treaty back from
her. They smiled at each other.
"You're ready?" he asked.
"Yes."
He stepped back and cleared his throat, and a blue glow came up
all around him. Savannah and Allen stood on either side of Brittany, who
boarded the hoverbike. Kalyani held his hand out to Sarah.
The girl clutched Binky's fishbowl to her chest, and Savannah
could see her shaking. It was dangerous to include Sarah in this. She
could get them all killed. But Savannah couldn't see a way around it. For
once she could sympathize with the girl -- she didn't want to be here
right now, either.
Kalyani took Sarah by the hand.
"Can you do this?" he asked, leaning down so that he didn't tower
over her. She closed her eyes. "It's alright," he said. "I'll guide you
through it. You don't have to do anything."
She nodded, and held out her hands. He took them in his own and
rubbed his thumbs softly across her knuckles, reassuring. When he let go,
the air glowed softly between the two of them, a combination of electric
blue and braids of fuscia, gold, and black.
Savannah watched as Sarah closed her eyes, shaking, and let out a
deep breath. The air between Kalyani and Sarah parted softly, tearing
slowly open to reveal a velvet black gap in reality.
Then something started happening to the air, and Kalyani frowned.
Sparks flew off from between the two Avatars, cascading into the
grass and beginning to burn there. Sarah moaned softly, and her brows
drew down over her eyes. Kalyani opened his eyes and cursed.
The whole area lit up, and Savannah sensed some other presence,
another mind, just before what looked like a miniature bolt of lightning
hit Kalyani. He screamed, but held on. The hoop juddered and began to
thrash. Allen was through it in an instant, with Brittany hot on his
heels. Savannah froze, looked at Kalyani who motioned frantically with
his eyes to jump through, his face slicked with sweat. Savannah took a
deep breath and threw herself in, just as Sarah's scream tore through the
air.
The world flickered out, and a verdant green light blossomed
upward to fill the empty space. She could feel her hair lashing back and
forth, which meant she was falling. Her bile began to rise, then another
body slammed into her and everything went black.
-=ð=- -=ð=-
There was a plain in Hell, made all of black stone, and the
reflections it showed could come to life and kill anyone who talked to
them. Only a heard of azurine demons roamed this plain, with hooves of
twisted horn.
But the herd stopped, and looked up, at a thing that was not-them
marring the sky. A flock of white doves was coming down through the
clouds, the faintest hint of the magic that had transported them there
still hanging about their wings as they fluttered in ever widening
circles toward the ground. Like vultures.
Paytan wondered if Brittany would notice they were missing.
Fifteen minutes later she stood at the center of the Plains in
Demon's Womb, surrounded by the corpses of azurine demons with twisted
hooves. She levitated the last one and broke its back, burst veins and
vessels as she slammed it to the ground. Beneath her feet, her reflection
laughed and capered, with giant black wings springing from its back,
hooves, and a tail lashing behind it like a whip.
Paytan ignored it and stood, considering the gore spattered
around her. In her head she could sense the minds of all the demons once
ruled by the owner of the crown, the very method she had used to track
these particular ones down for her own brand of revenge. But this
step-by-step slaughter was beginning to get boring. And it just didn't
seem to be doing enough harm.
"All those now mine, listen," she whispered. She felt her voice
reach out across the distances, echoing in the ears of all the demons
ruled by the crown's previous wearer. They answered to her now. Enough
for an army.
"Come here. Follow me," she said, and turned her eyes toward
another castle, this one all of melted silver and blood.
-=ð=- -=ð=-
Savannah woke up lying flat on her back, and wished fervently for
a moment that she could go to Hell, just once, and end up standing. She
sat up and took in a deep breath of hot, dry air that stank of stomach
acid and puke.
God, she hated this place.
She could see Brittany rubbing her temples, on the ground with
her eyes closed. "You okay?" she yelled.
Brit winced and nodded. "Conked my head. You?"
"Unhappy, but otherwise okay." She got laboriously to her feet
and looked around them. The hoverbike was about twenty feet to her left,
upended near weird spear of rock. It looked like it would still function.
She thought she saw Allen laying next to it. But a closer look showed
that it wasn't him at all.
"Brittany! Brittany get over here!" shouted Savannah, already in
motion. It was Sarah. Lying in a pool of blood, tumbled like a cloth
doll.
Savannah reached her first. A bruise covered over half the girl's
face and continued down her neck and below her T-shirt. There was blood
everywhere, and for one very cold second Savannah thought she wasn't
breathing. But she was, just a little bit, chest rising and falling
shallowly. Brittany came up behind her and got a good look at Sarah, then
headed straight for the hoverbike.
"We need to get her back somehow, to a hospital!" called
Savannah.
"She'd have to wake up," yelled Brit, rummaging through one of
the hoverbike's compartments. "She's the only one with the powers to open
another dimensional portal."
"Dammit! Is Allen okay? Her pulse is weak, Brit, and she's still
bleeding."
"I don't see him -- wait. Oh." Brit hauled a white doctor's bag
with a red construction paper cross masking taped to the side with one
hand, while she snatched a piece of paper off the bike's handlebars with
the other. She glanced at it on her way back, then dropped it in
Savannah's lap and knelt by Sarah, opening the bag.
The note read:
You're all still asleep, but there doesn't
seem to be anything dangerous around. When
you wake up, feel free to come find Paytan
and me.
Ta,
Faq Boy
Not only did she hate Hell, but Savannah remembered now why she
hated Allen, too. "Is she gonna be okay?"
"I don't know," Brit glanced up at her for a second. "Does it
look like I have any more first aid experience than you do? I think
something started to tear her in half, but stopped before it got too far.
She's bruised everywhere, and there's this long tear in her skin running
from her neck to her hip. Don't know how deep it goes. It could have
gotten an internal organ -- "
"STOP! Just stop. Fix her. Bandage her up, use all the stuff from
the bag and make sure she'll be okay. Let's get Paytan and get out."
Brittany didn't say anything. She just kept working, methodically
pulling out disinfectants and bandages.
Savannah squinted at the oddly shaped shards of rock around them.
Some of them were still smoking. They weren't rocks at all, but pieces of
a castle. A few yards away she saw a vaguely human shaped form, its head
replaced by a fan of blood.
"Brittany," she said, and the other girl looked where she was
looking, her own eyes widening in realization.
"Uh oh," whispered Brit.
"You think maybe Paytan doesn't need saving?"
________________________________________________________________________
Binky, Out-of-It Lass, Perdition, Weirdness Girl, Sarah, and Kalyani
copyright Jennifer Whitson, 1995. Allen is Jamas Enright's. As far as I
know, Master Blaster is Public Domain. Everyone else is someone's.
Next Issue:
Paytan's loose in Hell, and now so is most of the cast. What
happens when the person who you came to rescue is doing just
fine on her own?
Some of Hell's current... misfortune begins to affect the real
world, and draws the eye of Occultism Kid.
========================================================================
